Driving Demand for Dairy, Food and Product Innovations — The Dairy Research Institute® and Cornell University Establish Partnership

Driving Demand for Dairy, Food and Product Innovations — The Dairy Research Institute® and Cornell University Establish Partnership

The Dairy Research Institute ® and Cornell University have established a partnership with the Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center. The center, located at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., will focus on fluid milk and dairy ingredient research, provide applications and technical support for improvements in milk powder quality and help establish the next generation of dairy ingredients. These are key priorities of the Dairy Research Institute, an organization providing world-class, pre-competitive dairy research and product innovation, funded by dairy farmers through the national checkoff program.

“With Cornell and the Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center in the national dairy research plan, dairy producers can further leverage producer investments in sound nutrition, product and technical research in ways that benefit the entire industry,” said Skip Hardie, owner and operator of Hardie Farms in Lansing, N.Y. Hardie also serves on the board of Dairy Management Inc.™, which manages the national dairy checkoff and directs research funding priorities.

The National Dairy Foods Research Center program is a unified, coordinated national research program providing strategic alignment to maximize dairy research and development resources.

“We are pleased to partner with Cornell University for their widely recognized expertise in milk powders, fluid milk, filtration and food safety,” said Gregory Miller, Ph.D., president of the Dairy Research Institute. “This partnership will allow us to better leverage their technical insights for our strategic initiatives and accelerate new product opportunities for dairy processors and the entire food and beverage industry.”

The center also will provide new learning opportunities for the industry with short course training in dairy food safety and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) and dairy processing with a particular focus on fluid milk processing, cheese making and artisan dairy production.

“The strong dairy research, teaching and extension community at Cornell is looking forward to working with the Dairy Research Institute, the other centers, as well as the dairy farmers and processors in New York and the rest of the U.S. to further advance collaborative applied and basic research as well as extension efforts to strengthen the U.S. dairy industry and the dairy innovation pipeline,” said Martin Wiedmann, associate director, Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center.

“The Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center program has a long history of providing basic and applied research outcomes that have helped drive innovation in the dairy industry,” said Dave Barbano, director, Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center. “For instance, filtration technology for milk protein fractionation and ingredient applications has been a major focus of the Northeast center, as milk is a rich source of nutrients that can be fractionated into a wide range of components and used as ingredients to boost the protein value of foods and beverages. This and other planned research could change how dairy processing plants perform their work.”

In addition to the Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center, other research centers in the National Dairy Foods Research Program include:
• California Dairy Research Center (Cal Poly State University and University of California — Davis)
• Midwest Dairy Foods Research Center (University of Minnesota — St. Paul, South Dakota State University — Brookings, and Iowa State University — Ames)
• Southeast Dairy Foods Research Center (North Carolina State University and Mississippi State University)
• Western Dairy Center (Utah State University)
• Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research (University of Wisconsin — Madison)

All dairy research centers have a dairy pilot plant and other facilities for research on dairy products, ingredients, processing and packaging. The dairy applications and technology development labs assist in prototype and concept development, product and process troubleshooting, product and process scale-up, and sensory evaluation.